On our recent trip digging for Herkimer Diamonds, I also picked up and kept chunks of calcite. I didn’t know what it was until someone told me. I am still learning all this stuff. But it looked interesting, and some of it was hard to tell from the diamonds (quartz) while it was dirty/muddy anyway. It was just easier to throw it in the bag.
But now that we are home, I have been cleaning up all the stuff we found. I am actually surprised at how many small chunks of calcite that we collected. Most are small, but a few pieces are larger with small pieces of rock attached.
I was reading stuff on the web and I found some stuff talking about the calcite. From what I understand, the calcite is one of the last things to form, and can form around the quartz crystals. So some of my small hunks of calcite might have Herkimer diamonds inside them. I know for sure a couple pieces do since the crystal is partially exposed.
But something else I learned was that the calcite can be disolved by soaking it in white vinegar.
So I took a few of the chunks of calcite with exposed quartz crystals, and set them in a bowl with distilled white vinegar. Right away, tiny bubbles started coming off the calcite. I kept checking back and I could see the quartz crystals becoming more and more exposed as the calcite was slowly eaten away. I placed some more pieces of calcite in the vinegar that may or may not have Herkimer diamonds in them. When I got up the this morning, the chunks were smaller. The bubbling action seemed to have stopped, so I replaced the used vinegar with some fresh vinegar.
When we were down in North Carolina going after emeralds, and other gemstones, the most productive method was creeking. That was simply using a screen box and a small shovel to dig from the bottom of the creek, dump it into the screen, sluice it in the creek water and examine the rocks that were left.
When I got home, I decided to build a screen box. I have a small stream running through my property and was wondering what kind of rocks were in there. I searched the web for screen boxes, sluicing boxes and anything else I could find, and couldn’t find any plans or directions how to make one. I wish I had gotten close of pictures of the ones we used in Hiddenite, NC. Anyway, I have to wing it and design my own.
Parts lists:
8′ x 3.5″ x 1″ pine board (without any major knots and that isn’t too warped)
8 x 3″ exterior screws (or 16 screws to make a second screen box)
1 roll of 1/4″ screen/hardware cloth.
Staple gun/staples.
Using a miter saw, cut the board into 8 pieces of even length (about 12″ minus waste from cutting blade).
Drill two holes 1/2 inch from one end of each board, using a drill bit about the thickness of the screws you are using (I used an 11/64 drill bit). Start with two boards, lining up the side of one board with the edge of another board, then using my a with a phillips head bit mounted, drive a screw in. Then line up the next board, and drive a single screw in. Continue until all four boards were attached in a square shape. Make sure the frame is square, then procede to drive in the remaining four screws.
Once the frame is solid, lay the screen over the frame. Using some wire cutters, carefully cut a square that covers the inside opening of the frame. You want the screen to cover as much of the frame as possible without overlapping the outside edge of the frame. Cut the screen right along the crosswire so you don’t get little points sticking out. Once the screen square is cut, clean up any sharp points.
Position the screen on the frame. Then using the staplegun, staple the screen to the frame spacing the staples about every one to two inches along the edge of the screen. You may need to tap the staples down using a hammer.
Now you have a screen box! With an 8 foot board and a roll of screen, you can make a couple screen boxes.
Many of the Herkimer “diamonds” I dug from the ground were clear, but many were a sort orange/yellow color. I was told this was actually rust. A couple people told me that the rust could be removed by soaking the crystals in something called Iron Out. The one guy said he left his diamonds soaking in Iron Out overnight, and they were white the next morning.
So when we go home, I went to the grocery store and also to Target to look for Iron Out. But I didn’t see any. I found CLR (Calcium-Lime-Rust remover) and bought some of that. First, I cleaned the diamonds in water with dish soap and Oxyclean. Then I soaked a few of the diamonds in a mixture of water and CLR. After while we scrubbed on the diamonds, and some of the rust came off. But this was nowhere as easy as what I had been told about the Iron Out.
I did some research. I went online and checked out the Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) for both Iron Out and CLR to see if they were the same or different. I found they were not even close to the same thing. I managed to find some Super Iron Out at Lowes Home Improvement. I bought a 5 lb jug of the stuff for a little about $11. I found it was a powder, and not a liquid. The directions called for 1/3 or 1/4 of a cup into a gallon of water. I wasn’t using near that much water. So I guestimated and pour just a little bit in and put a few diamonds in. They bubbled for few seconds then settled down. I checked periodically and even in a short time I could see the rust color fading or disappearing altogether! Wow, it worked fast! I left the diamonds in the Iron Out overnight and most of them were clear by morning. A few still have rust stains, so after taking the finished crystals out, I replaced the water and added more Iron Out.
I took Friday off from work for a long weekend. We left home about 8am and got to the Crystal Grove Mine about 11am. We checked in, dumped some stuff off in our cabin, and headed of to the mine. There were already people out working. There were several mining sites to choose from, but the manager recommended the Tears of Wenedi location. I had read good things about this location on the web.
I had bought all my tools with me (sledges, shovels, claws, wedges, chisels, and crack hammers). I debated about the screen boxes. I ended up throwing one of them into the trunk.
I headed straight to the wall with visions of splitting off sections of rock and exposing vugs filled with Herkimer Diamonds. Two guys were already working on the wall with hammers and wedges. I found another place with a crack to work on. I worked on splitting off some rock only to reveal moer rock. Actually the first thing I did was to bash my hand with the crack hammer and take some skin of. It bled for a long time before finally stopping. The two guys broke off a lot of rock over the weekend!
After my attepts to break off chunks of rock proved to be non-productives, I tried breaking up smaller chunks of rock with the crack hammer looking for hidden vugs. I didn’t find much this way either. Occasionally I would find a chunk of rock with Herkimer Diamond attached to the rock. But when I attempted to break it off, or break the rock in the a smaller display piece, I usually succeeded in destroying the Herkimer diamond.
My wife had the dog on a leash, and sat over in the soft dirt digging. She found some stuff.
My next strategy with to walk around and just look for diamonds laying exposed on the ground. I found some this way, and it was a lot easier than breaking rocks.
Then I met a guy named Dave who was having luck using a screen box. He would collect a bucket of dirt, and then sluice it in one of the mud puddles on the mine floor. I tried this, and it worked very well. I found lots of shards, and some nice little whole diamonds as well. I collected my dirt from different locations. The most productive turned out to be below where the two guys were busting off chunks of rock. We asked them persmission to collection dirt along the the wall where they were breaking of rock, and they said okay. As I said, I found a lot of stuff this way. I kept the shard figuring that my wife could use them for her crafting stuff. I also found many pieces of calcite and rocks with what I think are dolomite crystals. I even found one little green rock that looked like some of the low quality emeralds we got in North Caraolina. I kept it. I seriously doubt it is an emerald though. After two days of collecting the quartz crytals like this, I was very sore. I also collected some small display type pieces of rock with exposed herks attached to them. I figure I will clean them up. Maybe keep one of them on my desk at work. I can give some away as gifts.
I would like to go back again sometime, and actually work on splitting off chunks of rock. I learn a lot about how it is done by watching the two guys do it.
Crystal Grove is located at 161 County Highway 114, St. Johnsville, NY 13452. Their phone number is 1-800-KRY-DIAM. They have a website at: http://www.crystalgrove.com
When the rubber band belt broke on our cheap Harbor Freight tumbler, we had a load of rocks in it. These were some of the rocks we collected at the Emerald Hollow Mine in North Carolina. Mostly pieces of agate, jasper, and misc rocks. When the vintage Lortone rock tumbler came, and I got it going, we went to load the rocks into it. The first thing we noticed was that this thing was much bigger. We ended up having to add a bunch of beads into the tumbler to fill up the space. We figured out that while cool to have a large commercial type tumbler, we aren’t always going to be wanting to tumble such large loads.
So I started searching for smaller Lortone tumblers. I found the 33b which was Lortones dual barrel rock tumbler, similar to the Harbor Feight peice of junk. I also found a model “3-1.5″. In the pictures it looked like the dual barrel but with 3 barrels. And the price was about the same. I thought, what a deal, and was ready to buy one. But after reading more, I realized that the barrels are smaller, like half the size of the dual barrel model’s barrels. So I decide to get the 33b modeal withe dual 3lb barrels.
I started seaching and found prices from $95-$117. But I found a metal detector place that had it listed for $80. $80? I kept reading the page to see if I was missing something. I did a search on the company and didn’t find anything bad about them. Still $80? Why so much less than everyone else? I decided to take a chance.
The tumbler came today! It was brand new in the box, and was a Lortone 33b just as advertised! Everything these, no problems!
So I think I got a great deal. We wont get a chance to play with it until we get back from digging Herkimer Diamonds though.